How can we resist the ‘datafication’ of teaching?

All welcome!

Our schools are dominated by ‘high stakes’ testing regimes, linked to league tables, Ofsted inspections, ‘naming and shaming schools’, and, in some cases, performance pay, school closure and forced academisation. As schools have come under pressure to improve test data at any cost, children have become numbers on spreadsheets to many school managers.
There is a growing critique of the role of high stakes tests in primary schools, with a movement building that rejects year 6 SATS and other standardised assessments. There is much less questioning of the centrality of GCSE exams in secondary schools. Indeed, the removal of national curriculum levels at KS3 has meant that the secondary curriculum is effectively cascaded down from the content of GCSE exam syllabi (put together by private companies such as Edexcel, Pearson Education). Students are on ‘flight paths’ towards GCSE grades generated by their primary school results from the moment they enter the building.
It doesn’t have to be this way!
Come and join a critical discussion about the domination of our education system by high stakes exams and the ‘datafication’ of teaching that accompanies this.
We will watch a short film about the ‘More Than A Score’ primary assessment campaign to get us thinking, and then explore the arguments presented in the article: “The Datafication of Teaching: Can Teachers Speak Back to the Numbers?” by Howard Stevenson (download here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/z1rrjcz9nqw9wqn/The%20Datafication%20of%20Teac...)
… plus anything else interesting that you want to bring along or comes up in between.
Hope to see you there!
Extra optional pre-reading:
“Beyond the Exam Factory: Alternatives to High Stakes Testing” – a collection of short pieces put together by the More Than A Score coalition. The intro is particlarly recommended to set the scene.
https://morethanascorecampaign.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/beyond-the-ex...
Radical Education Forum meets at the Common House, 5e Pundersons Gardens, Bethnal Green, E2 9QG, on the last Monday of each month.
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